Adieu, Mimi
by Funsmoke
Summary: Based on Une Vielle Maitresse, or The Last Mistress. Hermangarde's mistress has something to say.
1. Chapter 1

I

It is how I remember it, _chère_, a chance comment made by the Vicomte de Progny. 'Your little friend has gotten married, Mlle la Comtesse.' The gouty old fool was one of the worst gossip-mongers in Paris, but to bring up such a thing, even in the quiet of my private _s__âlon_, when I had scarcely resumed my connexions with my friends in Paris, was spiteful, even for him.

'I have a great deal of friends whose nuptials I have not been fortunate enough to celebrate with them, M. le Vicomte, particularly as I was absent during the spring and summer, the season of love. Doubtless, however, you mean dear Mlle de la Polastron?' I smiled coolly. My father, as you know, was English. You know also, my darling, that I can be as cold as a dead fish, if I need, but my mother is pure Parisian, and my understanding of the intrigue is her particular legacy. 'I believe my brother Victor attended, and my sister, Alcmene. I was, of course, in England.'

'And it was very gallant of you, too,' continued the vile Progny, 'to see a man who was once your most amorous suitor marry a woman you do not at all know?'

'Ah, but you mistake,' I held up my hand. 'My lord the Duke of Rothcester courted me only out of necessity; he did not have any serious love for me. Why, we grew up pestering one another.'

A fatuous smile came to Progny's greasy lips. 'Ah! You are too young to yet consider yourself quite grown up, Mlle la Comtesse.' He exclaimed.

'Monsieur is too kind.' I bestowed upon him the glazed smile of the supremely bored.

It was not long before he (the excretious vulture) excused himself, having deposited his reeking egg of information in the nest of my mind. It was nothing, of course, that I did not know. Only, it brought to me the realisation, my love, that I had not seen you since I had returned.

Suddenly, I missed you, bone-deep, as I had ever since I had gone away from Paris, had left you, dewy eyed but brave, with your trembling lower lip, all alone, with only your grandmère, the Marquise de Flers for company.

I knew, of course, that you were going to marry, a beautiful young profligate whom you adored. I, myself, had never met him, though I had seen him before at the opera with various women. You wrote to me upon your engagement. Ryno, you called him, and I could very well imagine you speaking his name in that coy, lover's-secret voice in which you had so often pronounced my own. Marigny, I called him, and thought as little as I could of him.

In the ring of light cast by my lamp in the dim coolness of my study, I sat down to write to you, as I do now. I did not plan, would not plan, the motion which my words would take. I knew it was cruel to introduce myself to you again this way, but I would do it anyhow. You were leaving Paris in a fortnight with your new husband, bound for the provinces, no doubt, but I needed you. I would encroach upon your fledgling happiness, upon the birthing-bed of your new and infinite life. I was going to insult your nuptial threshold with the burden of myself, cool politesse and sincere good wishes.

'My dear Madame,' I wrote, with tolerable steadiness, 'How strange to call you after such a style, when you have always been "dear Mimi" to my mind.' I used _vous_ mercilessly, mingling coquettish familiarity with formal address. 'It has been vile of you not to write, and it is only from my dear brother Victor that I had an account of your marriage. Certainly, I am assured of your happiness, if I know nothing else, for if you are so enchanted by your husband that you cannot constrain yourself to communicate with your most devoted friends, you must be very happy indeed. But why did you not write? Were you afraid I would oppose it? Well, never mind that. I will come to you. I hear you depart Paris very soon, and I wish to see you before you are so thoroughly entombed—' here I could see your forehead wrinkling in distaste at this phrasing, '—in nuptial bliss that the influences of old friends can have no sway. Tonight, then, at eight? After supper, but before the opera. Yours, Isolde Wade, Countess of Scarborough.'

It was a letter that would have been peremptory for anyone else, but things had been too deep between you and I, darling, to merit anything but this. I knew you would see not only the bitterness in my light words, but the tenderness, too. You have always seen precisely what it is I mean.

I sent the billet (was it a _billet-doux_?) with an attendant, and made myself beautiful for you. Being a woman, you are doubly aware of the beauty of rivals, and what might have been the stuff of a man's dearest fancy would have been mediocrity to you.

When I finally entered your parlour, you were absent. Darling, it wrenched at my heart that you would feed me to the wolves in this manner, leaving me alone with your husband, when all I wanted was the merest glimpse of you. Would a moment alone have cost you so dear?

He stood lounging against the fire, the red gold gleaming on his finger like a thrown gauntlet. I gave him a smile, and he responded in kind, crossing the room and taking my hand to bow over it. 'My dear Mlle la Comtesse,' he murmured, in a voice made for a lover, his pale green eyes searching mine through heavy black lashes, 'Hermangarde has told me everything about you. I feel that you are as completely my friend as you have been hers.'

By Apollo, he was beautiful. Only a fool (and a blind fool, at that) would ever deny it, and no one had ever called me either. He was all that was perfect in his type, the elegant, slender effeminate, who challenged women in the freshness of his complexion, in the fullness of his sensualist's mouth, in the lucidity of his indolent eyes. Perhaps it was only that he had green eyes. I had not exactly lied to the Vicomte de Progny when I said that the young Scotch duke had no interest in me, but I had myself been very well in love with him, and his green eyes. But Ryno de Marigny was nothing like Laurence of Rothcester. He had that flexible waist, which so well typifies the Parisian man of fashion, and defies distinction between the ages of thirteen and thirty. Indeed, M. de Marigny could have been of any age at all, provided it was ethereal. I saw in a moment why you, my dear Hermangarde, had been so drawn to him. But there must be something beyond the beauty which caused you to adore him enough to forget me so entirely.

'I am afraid,' I said, preventing myself consciously from assuming the _rôle_ of a feeble-minded young coquette, 'that you have the advantage of me. Hermangarde has told me very little about you, monsieur, so that I fear I shall never equal your understanding of me, and shall make a very big fool of myself.'

'Don't be silly, Isolde!' cried your fresh young voice from the antechamber, and my heart uplifted within me. 'You've never feared looking like a fool, and you never have. You are too much conscious of how perfect you are. Ryno, my love, is she not gorgeous?'

'Just as you told me, my dear.' Marigny replied. I turned to accept your embrace, with your lavender-water scent, and your kiss, feather-light and laden with unspoken promises, upon my forehead.

'Mimi,' I murmured into your ear as I kissed you in return. I longed to hold you, to feel the birdlike trembling of your body against mine.

'Oh, Isolde,' you smiled, with the brilliance of a thousand suns, and more vivacity besides, 'you must not call my by that silly child's name any longer.'

'Oh? Shall I call you Mme. la Comtesse now?' I teased, tugging on a golden ringlet which had escaped the severe ministrations of your hairdresser.

'No. You must call me as my husband calls me. Hermangarde.'

'As you wish, Mme de Marigny.' I dipped a curtsey. You laughed, and I doubted your illuminated god of a husband knew you were being facetious. He really was like something out of a book. I imagine Zeus must have looked so as a swan.

He was smiling with you. The happy fool. I examined again the dichotomy of resolve, of age, and suffering hidden behind those limpid green eyes, and the ethereal agelessness of his face. Oh, there was the first thing you would have found to love. Sweet Diana, how could I ever hope to compete with that?

'It really is quite dreadful of us to keep you standing here.' I was saying, leading us toward the lounges, where coffee was laid out. We arranged ourselves quite civilly, you and I, Hermangarde, on the settee, and he in a wing-backed silken chair, made after the English fashion. Do you recall how our knees brushed? How you would not quite meet my eyes?

I do not recall what it was we chattered about. Something silly, I expect. Something simple, of the Parisian set. I complained about England, and you told me that my elder brother, Joseph, had been again the object of a scandal, which was silly, because I knew very well that he was chaste, and had aspirations toward the seminary. Marigny knew him, had been of the same set when they were some ten or twelve years younger. I teased him for being old, and you, _chère_, for marrying a man who was near as anything to a corpse.

I despised it, even as I laughed. I longed to strike him, to call him out, as another man might, to throw myself at his feet and beg mercy—to demand it. Hermangarde, you were so alive. I have never seen you more beautiful. Even unclad in candle light, your golden hair spilling over my pillow like the rays of the sun, whispering obscene pleas, you were never more satisfied. I wanted to laugh hysterically and dash my hands through my hair, to despise you, to love your husband as you did.

Oh, darling, I wanted so much to be alone with you.

But he tarried, and watched me.

I do not believe he suspected anything, not for a moment, but there must have been something between us that he found unnerving, and you—you!—traitor, you would not give him some silly excuse to leave.

My house in the Rue de'l Arbre Sec came into play. Would I stay in Paris, or return to London, as Victor wanted?

'That is right, you have a twin brother,' Marigny said. 'You know, I have seen him once or twice. Always getting into duels, that one, is he not?'

'Victor adores me,' I said. Finally, someone who would never leave me. 'He is determined that I should remain an old maid, and adore him, too.'

'That seems hardly fair,' Marigny said. It was at that moment, my dear Hermangarde, that I knew I could have him. Oh, not straight away. I could see that he adored you, that the fresh spring of marriage still overflowed in his black heart, aged beyond his physical years (and what had he lost to make it so?), but he would soon learn to take you for granted, to realise that you are his, completely his, and he would begin to imagine that he is not completely yours. The simpleton.

The whole affair played out in my mind, over the course of a moment. I could call upon him one day, when I knew you were gone, and express my disappointment at your absence. He would insist upon giving me something to drink, at least. There it could begin. I am no mean woman. I have had Paris at my feet since I was fourteen. Marigny would prostrate himself, as well, to the idol I would make of myself. I could have him within five months, and reject or accept him as suited me.

And he was beautiful.

But you, my darling Hermangarde.

You.

I have loved you too well and too fiercely to allow myself to take what I want and to ruin your joy. I shall not take from you what you will not yield. I told you that once, and I mean to abide by it.

Ruin him, darling. Please, please ruin him before he does it to you.

Oh, Hermangarde.

You reign, the despot, the tyrant, single-handedly crushing the freedom of my heart. How you imagine life without me, when I am so helpless to imagine life without you, convinces me utterly of your sovereignty. You, fragile and ingenuous and starry-eyed in love with your lovely, unfaithful husband (do you think I do not know what all of Paris knows?), you will rule the world, my darling.

When he calls back his _prima donna_, his Malaguese, will you have me then? Will you have your inextinguishable, cold-blooded English girl?

Find me, then, through your _lorgnette_ at the opera, when he goes to number 46, Rue du Carmes, and you are open-mouthed in horror. I will come to you if you but beckon with your smallest finger.

I will not destroy anything that your beautiful swan Marigny has not first beaten to shells with his terrible archangel's wings.


	2. Chapter 2

II

I don't know why I went to see you again. It was certainly not because I believed it was right. My intentions were clear enough. I wanted to seduce you, to cause you to commit an infidelity against your husband. I wanted to make you see that you still needed me, my beautiful girl.

You always thought I was most beautiful in furs. I wrapped myself in a dress so deep a blue it might have been mourning (perhaps it was?), and a great white cape of dense, brutal bearskin, not so elegant, but not so common, and obtruded upon your parlour on an early evening when I knew your Marigny would be out, making ready with your factor for your impending departure to Normandy.

You received me very warmly (and not nearly warmly enough!) and kissed my hands (why not my mouth?), exclaiming how good I was not to forget you. As if I could. 'Put off that dreadful great fur, darling, there is a gorgeous fire here! Why, you look like a hunter!' you laughed, upswept in the giddy joy of nuptial happiness. 'Why has your trapping excursion led you here?'

'Because, Hermangarde,' I said, as evenly as I could, 'I miss you.'

'Miss me? Why, you only saw me the other day, my dear.'

'And you paid more attention to Marigny's waistcoat buttons than you did to me, your dearest friend.'

'Oh, as to that, never mind!' she pouted. I wanted to pinch her lips and bit them. 'Anyway, take care how you say that name. It is mine now, too, you know.'

'Shall I humour you, then, and call you Mme de Marigny?' I demanded. 'You will no longer accept Mimi.'

'Oh, does Hermangarde seem so formal to you? Isolde, Isolde, why do your eyes flash at me? You are usually so cold, so English. To see you behaving as passionately as a Catalane terrifies me, it is so unnatural. Do not be fierce with me, I could not bear it!' your voice was so sweet and caressing, as it had been before, when you were mine, murmuring sweet idle things in my arms. It was as though time had melted between us, and I melted again to your will.

'Then I shall be English, if it suits you better,' I replied, assuming an air I knew you would recall from our teasing play acting, when it amused you to see me behave like a haughty British peer as I lay naked beside you. You laughed, clapped your hands.

'Oh, darling! That is better. I was really so afraid you had come to try convincing me to deceive my husband.'

I saw no use in denying anything. I have always been quite frank with you. 'Hermangarde, your fears were true.' I drew up close to you, and your eyes pled into mine. For a long moment, we were suspended, like a fly in amber, and then your hand rose to cup my face.

You traced my forehead with a fingertip then, my dear Hermangarde, and I knew you were carving your name in the fine hair surrounding my face. It was as though the past months of absence had only sharpened your memories. But could the persistence of these memories convince you that I was worthy of you? Of this? For a moment, I thought I should never have to leave you again, never pretend, never smile sweetly and flirt with your beautiful husband. But your sweet, virginal lips parted, and you spoke the words of my death sentence.

'We can't go on like this, Isolde. Oh, darling, I am so fortunate. I adore my husband. You were a thing permitted to me for a moment. It was a sweet trinket in my memory-box. My most beloved, surely, and dearest, but it must remain a memory.'

It is one of the sweet lies lovers tell one another. 'I will never forget you. You are the only balm for my heart.' Useless. All useless words. I have never employed them, even when I meant them. You know that, and from you, they were like a curse, like the meanest insult. O, the atrocity! I stepped away from you. No doubt you believed I was summoning my self control, but it was not what you thought. I restrained myself, yes, but not from kissing you. I restrained myself from striking you. You were the most poisonous adder at that moment, and I hated you with all the virulence of a rival. Perhaps you saw it, a little, for you drew back and gazed up at me with your wide blue eyes, all innocence and purity.

I wonder, does your beloved husband know that your icon has nothing to do with who you are? But perhaps he has it right. I love you for your flaws, my dear Hermangarde. I love you for your dreadful narcissism, and your sensual enjoyment of your own emotional torment. I love you for your sweet lies, and how, until now, they were never for me. I love your kisses, forbidden and self-conscious, and how you hardly move when I make love to you. You are no wanton, to kindle desire with the inferno of the damned, my darling. You are an icy demon.

'Madame,' I bowed, a masculine gesture you used to giggle about, 'I take my leave.'

'Oh, but why must you go, Isolde?' you crooned. Selfish, evil woman. I was all despairing. Had I ever denied you anything? 'I still love you as my sister, as my heart's dearest friend. I am going to Normandy soon, and I shall not see you again for so long! Stay, please, and we will talk of pleasant things.'

'No,' I said, and rose, and you flinched as though I had struck you. 'I don't think I shall see you before your departure.'

Your eyes fluttered, and you sighed. 'Are you very angry with poor Ryno?' the sweet pout of your mouth made me shudder with revulsion. I still wanted to tangle a fist in your hair, to wrench your head back and devour the skin of your throat. I laughed manically. Anyone, seeing me just then, would have taken me for a mad thing, and by the way you stepped back, perhaps you did.

'Ryno? Oh, madame, your husband is a stranger to me. Why should I be angry with him?'

'He thinks you do not like him very much.'

'I do, Hermangarde. Or I would, if he were not your husband. You now I admire effeminate men. Why, he is nearly as beautiful as my brother Collum.'

'But you always call when he is away, you never speak of him, and you are sullen when I do. Why can you not love him, as I do?'

'I could, madame,' I replied, as coolly as I could to your impossible question, 'but I should have to take him to bed first.' A weaker lover might now linger over how sweet it was to feel the fire of your blow, if only because you had touched them, but I am no sop hearted fool. Perhaps I wanted to pin your arm back and kiss you senseless, but I did not enjoy the slap you dealt. I nodded. It was as much as I deserve. 'Now, perhaps, you will allow me to take my leave of you?'

'Not at all.' You replied, at least as coolly, though to my delight, twin spots of colour had appeared on your cheeks, so that ivory and rose mingled for a long moment. 'Do you not hear the horses in the drive? You will greet my husband. You will wish us the best.'

'Madame, I said I love you. I did not say I was your willing slave. You have money, and a man for that.' I took my leave, though my heart thudded against my corset and I longed to show your husband exactly what I had done to you nearly every night for over a year.

As it happened, I passed him in the hall. He was on his way to see you, the smile of longing, with which I was myself so well acquainted, alight upon his face.

'Mlle la Comtesse, have I only just missed you, then?' he took my hand and raised it to his lips. 'I am despairing.'

'Do not say so, M de Marigny,' I replied, summoning my easiest smile.

'Oh? And why not? Should not my wife's friends be mine, too?'

'If you like, monsieur, but you should take an account of me from your wife first, to ascertain whether you truly want me as a friend.'

'Oh, but I have. And I do.' His smile, so fresh and adorable, would not have been out of place on a girl of fourteen. I could scarcely believe he was more than ten years my senior. 'Hermangarde has only the best things to say of you. She says you are good and honest, and dreadfully clever.'

'All merits, I am afraid, which mark many a good priest, as well, my lord.' I replied glibly. I had no desire to be _liked_ by your Adonis. He laughed. Laughed and pressed my hand.

'Come see us, sometime, in Normandy. We depart within the week. It will be dreary, and Hermangarde is always in remarkably good spirits every time she sees you.'

_It is because_, I wanted to say, _she loves torturing me, your dear, innocent Hermangarde._ But I only smiled. 'Perhaps I will. Ask your dear wife to send an invitation when your household there is established.'

'Absolutely, Mlle la Comtesse.'

'Please,' I insisted, despising myself, and intoxicated by his unusual beauty, 'you must call me Isolde, as darling Hermangarde does.'

'Then you will call me Ryno,' he kissed my fingers again, and through the lace of the glove, I luxuriated in the silk of his lips. Hermangarde, it appears as though you have a great weakness for libertine sensualists. I curtseyed, and he laughed. 'It is going to sound terribly peculiar, but there is no chance that I have met you before? How old are you? Surely older than Hermangarde.'

I shook my head. 'Eighteen, my lord—Ryno. Your wife is my senior by nearly five years.'

He looked astonished. 'I beg pardon, mademoiselle. I had thought, I mean—I believed you were—'

'Don't think of it, my lord. You may have seen my sister Alcmene. She is twenty-three.'

He shrugged, and I thought he was about to bid me farewell, but he tossed his head like a movement like an impatient horse. 'Please, my lady—Isolde—you must understand that I have loved Hermangarde—I _do_ love Hermangarde—more than anything in all the world.'

'Why, Ryno, the fact is in every line of you.' I said, probably more caressingly than was proper. If he thought I was trying to seduce him—

'But you still do not approve of me.'

I was so startled that I laughed. I do not believe it put his mind at rest for a moment. 'What do you care, monsieur, if I approve of you? Hermangarde is yours.' I shook my head. 'Anyhow, you make her happy. It is all any devoted friend could ask for.'

'Hermangarde speaks of you as of a guarding angel, leading her through the treacherous waters of Parisian intrigue. I cannot myself believe that you are incapable of fashioning her ideas.'

'You think I dislike you.' I said. He shrugged, a beautiful motion of such elegant shoulders. 'Permit me, then, to lay your fears to rest. I shall embrace you like a brother, do you permit it.' he signified that he did. 'And there shall be peace betwixt our houses.'

I laid my hands upon his shoulders, and drew myself upward, and he bent his head so that I might imprint upon that marble forehead a kiss. It cost all my control and dignity not to weep for the sweet torture of it, and I wondered whether I was coming to revel in agony, as you do, darling.

My arms were round his neck and I was gazing up into his jade-carved eyes when the door to the parlour clicked open, and you emerged, wondering what could be taking your beloved so long to come to you. We started apart, he and I, as though we shared some guilty secret, when all we had in common was loving you. 'My dear,' he said, reaching for you, 'Mlle Isolde and I have made peace, just when you were despairing that we should never get along.'

I don't know why you looked so small and frail in the doorway, but you suddenly were more like my enemy than ever, as though I had come to seduce your husband, and not you. 'All is well, then.' Your voice was high and cold, devoid of all sympathy. 'Will you really not come again before I am gone, Isolde, with so much to beguile you?'

I granted another ironic bow. 'I am at my lady's service, her merest slave.'

'Ah! You have said it!' you cried. 'Friday, then. After the opera.' Your voice was like a queen's command.

'Till then, Mimi.' I smiled deliberately, and touched Marigny's arm.

When I left, I did not intend to see you again, and in a way, I never did.

I saw your husband again, do not mistake, and someone who pretended to be you. She even had all your worst qualities, all the things I thought I loved in you. She had your mouth and eyes and trembling, virginal charm. But she was not you, my love, my darling Hermangarde. She lacked all the fierceness love instilled in you, lacked life and colour and the good things for which you were so often lauded. Is it because of beautiful Ryno's evenings at number 46, Rue du Carmes? Is it the loss of your child? Is it because I do not press my affections upon you, and hardly see you in the _s__âlons_ when we meet by accident?

It cannot be that. For all that I flung my raw, untutored heart beneath your glass-shard hells, I never faulted you for ceasing to love me. For a man as beautiful as Marigny, I might have forgotten you myself. His sort, who combine angelic beauty with magnetic intelligence, are rare. Perhaps he's more like Laurence than I thought.

Whatever the cause, Hermangarde, you never returned from Normandy. And I, perhaps the only soul in the world to realise it, I miss you.

Adieu, Mimi.


End file.
